Character secrets

[der_kluge]

My current character is a female fighter named Cairi.

To the rest of the players in my group, she is a young boy named Thomas. She fled home to avoid an arranged marriage, and has been posing as a young boy named Thomas, whom they hired as a mercenary recently, and know very little about. (hopefully none of them read these forums, I don't think they do). It'll be neat to see how long I can keep up the charade.


Tell me about an interesting secret you've given to one of your players.

 

[Steverooo]

Once upon a time, in a non-standard AD&D Campaign, long ago, I played a LG Ranger/Monk. I can't recall if he was multiclassed with Cleric, as well, or not... Anyway, although the game was short, I refused to tell the other PCs what this one was. Finally, we levelled up, and one of the players asked the GM what kind of character came to train mine. The GM asked me to describe them, and I told the other player that one looked like a warrior, with a bow and chainmail, another like a fighter, and that the third one had no armour nor equipment. I believe he thought that my PC was a fighter/magic user/Ranger, or somesuch!

 

[Jdvn1]

I had a character who went the entire game under a false name.

He was a rogue, you see, and the GM was getting the party together and my character pauses to borrow some coin bags. So I pass my Sleight of Hand checks with flying colors, but I didn't try a Spot check to make sure there weren't any cops around. Soo... I'm trying to explain the mix-up with the guard and I give him a false name so that hopefully I can't be tracked down later. So a little girl comes up to me and goes, "Uncle, are you okay?" Well, the guard couldn't arrest me in front of the girl, so I just got a warning. The girl, whom I had never met, was an expert rogue and had heard my false name. So I had to stick by that story for a while. The girl introduced me to my employer, so I had to stick by that name for a while longer. The employer introduced me to my party members, so... I was stuck with that name. For the entire game. And no one ever realized it.

 

[The_Gneech]

I played in a game set in Musketeer-era France, where every character had to have a secret. The group consisted of two women and myself.

One woman: Was masquerading as a man.

One woman: Had a secret love child.

Me: Was a masked swashbuckler who went by the name "Alexandre de la Rose," pretended to be French, but was really an actor from England fleeing from Cromwell's puritanism.

It was a fun game!

-The Gneech

 

[der_kluge]

Once upon a time, in a non-standard AD&D Campaign, long ago, I played a LG Ranger/Monk. I can't recall if he was multiclassed with Cleric, as well, or not... Anyway, although the game was short, I refused to tell the other PCs what this one was. Finally, we levelled up, and one of the players asked the GM what kind of character came to train mine. The GM asked me to describe them, and I told the other player that one looked like a warrior, with a bow and chainmail, another like a fighter, and that the third one had no armour nor equipment. I believe he thought that my PC was a fighter/magic user/Ranger, or somesuch!

Our last group had a psionic warrior in it. It was a short lived game (since a couple of us moved away), but another player was really freaked out when the "fighter" cast a spell to give him self a DR during a battle. He was quite perplexed as to what that character was. What was better was that we didn't normally allow psionics into the game, so a psionic character wasn't even an option in his mind. It was funny.

 

[freebfrost]

Probably the best-kept secret I've had a player pull off was in my last Forgotten Realms campaign - one of the party's clerics had been possessed by the spirit of Bane and was actively leading the party towards accomplishing goals that would enable him to return as a god.

At one point "Bane" had everyone in the party thinking that *someone* in the party had an evil agenda, but he was the only one that everyone else still trusted!

 

[Ze]

When the character of one my players died in our running campaign, I offered him the possibility to take over an NPC (not specifying which). He accepted.
Since then, he's been playing this former npc - an assassin who had previously framed the paladin of the party and killed another npc. Actually, he follows the party on behalf of his lords, who sooner or later will turn out to be the BEGs, of course...
And to make things more complicated, he's a dwarf magically camouflaged as an old man (I admit that's a bit too much, but... ).

 

[Crothian]

I had a Bard that was on the run from a noble woman he wooed and promised to marry but upon actually meeting her he ran and become a simple boar hunter to hide himself from her family that was actively hunting him. I had a very well thought out and defined background that never became in issue in the campaign.

 

[diaglo]

read the story hour in my sig.

i'm currently playing a hin dragonhunter. but secretly i'm something else

 

[sniffles]

This doesn't quite fit your request, der_kluge, since I'm a player, not a GM. But just a few months ago we finished up an AD&D Forgotten Realms campaign. I started off playing a half-elf ranger who was only about 20 yrs. old. About halfway into the campaign the party all got transported back in time 50 years to the Time of Troubles, and en route my character suddenly realized that she remembered living a lot longer than 20 yrs. - and just prior to the time travel she saw her mother's spirit and saw an elf, not a human as she had believed. So my PC went from being a half-elf to an elf. I got to change her appearance too; she'd apparently been under a very powerful glamour/geas that was dispelled by the time-travel magic. This was all the GM's idea, not mine. He knew I'd always wished I'd chosen to play her as a full elf, so he kindly granted my desire.

I also played in a Champions campaign for a while that had a Batman-like character on the team. At one point that character was unconscious and one of the other PCs went to his aid - and discovered some distinctly non-masculine anatomy hidden under 'his' armor.